Prevenient grace has a foundational place in John Wesley’s theology. Why is this so? Because salvation is central to the Christian faith. Wesley stated, “salvation begins with what is usually termed (and very properly) ‘preventing grace.’”¹ Prevenient grace, as a crucial aspect of Wesley’s doctrine of grace, needs to be set in the larger context of that doctrine and his theology as a whole.² This enables us to have a clear view of prevenient grace and its functions in Wesley’s theology and, hopefully, to avoid misunderstandings.

The term “prevenient grace” is not in the Bible. Indeed, this whole way of speaking of different kinds of “graces”—“prevenient grace,” “saving grace,” “sanctifying grace”—is not the way the biblical writers speak of grace. Where then did this language and phraseology come from?

There is a difference between providential grace and prevenient grace. Providence is how God provides for the sustenance and provision of his creation.¹ God “sees to” (Gen. 22:8, 14) what is needed to sustain the world and to provide for individual persons. How God’s providence affects each person’s life is profoundly mysterious. When and where and into what family one is born is a question of providence. Why one person is born into a Hindu family in India in 1765, while another person is born into a Christian family in Canada in 2015 are matters of providence.